The Road
"I have to watch you all the time... If you break little promises you'll break big ones." (pg 34 McCarthy)
Overcoming difficulties seems to be the theme of this novel, they're living in a post apocalyptic world and need to learn how to deal with new and interesting struggles consistently. Many human traits are put to the test over the course of the novel so far and the two main characters, the father and son have been quite well at dealing with them.
Trust, a very important human trait is something that everyone struggles with on a daily basis. Especially in a post apocalyptic world where people are constantly fighting for their lives. This quote demonstrates that even people that are extremely close to one another can still have doubts as to what the other will follow through on. By working hard to build trust for one another people can survive together quite well, until somebody makes one mistake and then the trust is slightly destroyed and very difficult to mend. This is slightly shown in the book with the boy stating the quote shown above. His father may have possibly betrayed his trust in a previous event. Potentially, he could have lost something that was considered very important to himself and constantly struggles with himself to truly trust his father again. I believe that people will do anything they can to benefit themselves no matter what the cost may be to others surrounding them and this is potentially what may have happened with the father and his son. Throughout the novel the father seems overly protective of his son, trying to regain that trust and also making sure that he doesn't lose that which keeps his motivation for living going. Although the boy sometimes questions the fathers decisions all that they have is each other and they learn to cope with any difficulties they've faced thus far in the novel.
